Thieving Weasels

by Billy Taylor

  I was about to make a crack about the size of Crayola’s crayon, then thought better of it. Some things are better left unsaid. Besides, Claire was already putting Crayola back in his parking spot—or whatever it is you call the place where horses sleep at night. Nursery? Solarium? Whatever.

  Next up was a tour of the house. It’s embarrassing to admit, but the first thing that popped into my head was what a fantastic time I would have had robbing it. After a few minutes, however, my attitude began to change. There was something about being in the very place where Claire grew up that was almost hypnotic, and I felt this incredible desire to have known her as a child. I wanted to travel back in time and be with her when she took her first step and gave her first doll a haircut. I wanted to be her high school boyfriend and witness every part of her life simultaneously. The feeling was overwhelming and I knew—right then and there—that I would have to take Roy’s job.

  It’s the only way, I told myself. Yes, there was a strong chance my family would pull some kind of stunt, but that didn’t matter. I wanted to live with Claire in a world of stables and horses, and if that meant going up against my family so be it.

  • • •

  Does it come as no surprise that I hated Claire’s friends? Every Amber, Tiffany, and Scott Merriweather the Third (“Scottso to my friends, bro.”) made me more jealous than the next, and it took less than ten minutes to break the vow of sobriety I’d made lying on the pee-pee protector on my mother’s bathroom floor. I’d never had a gin and tonic before, but it went down fast and cool, and that’s all that mattered.

  The only problem was the more I drank, the more I felt like a fraud. I tried to act like Cam Smith, but every time I opened my mouth Skip O’Rourke came pouring out. It made no sense. These were the same kind of people I’d been shining on for three-and-a-half years at Wheaton, but after just one week with my family I’d lost the ability to communicate with them. It was like I’d been infected by a virus. Except there was more to it than that. There was something about the way Claire and her friends carried themselves that I found more intoxicating than gin. They moved with this air of effortless certainty that seemed to say no matter what happened to them everything was going to turn out just super-duper, and that all the good jobs, fancy houses, and beautiful spouses were just waiting there for them to pluck off the tree of good fortune.

  And damn it if I didn’t want to be just like them.

  Finally, thanks to a cocktail of one part resentment and two parts envy, I was driven from the party. I found a window seat on the second floor and stared down at the river of luxury vehicles clogging the driveway. Look at that, I told myself. The sticker price of just one of those cars would solve my problems three times over. I shook my head. Maybe it took one to know one, but something about their wealth struck me as almost criminal.

  “Here you are.”

  I looked up, and Claire was standing in the doorway.

  “Hey,” I said.

  She joined me at the window. “Having a good time?” she asked. “You seem a little preoccupied.”

  “I’m just tired.”

  “Maybe this party wasn’t such a good idea.”

  “No, it’s great.”

  She ran a hand through my hair and adjusted the curtains. “I love this spot. When I was a little girl I used to hide up here for hours. One time my parents even called the police.”

  The P word rattled my brain, and I stared into Claire’s eyes. Her pupils filled me with awe, and I wanted to hide inside them forever. Then the craziest thought occurred to me, and for one drunken moment, I thought I’d discovered the answer to all my problems.

  “Marry me,” I blurted out.

  “What?”

  I grabbed Claire’s hand and got down on my knees. “Claire Benson, will you marry me?”

  “You mean now?”

  “There must be a Justice of the Peace or a sea captain around here someplace. I’ll defer my admission to Princeton and get some kind of job to support us. On weekends we can go for drives in the country, or go skiing, or do anything you want. It’ll be magic. It’ll be great.”

  “What kind of job will you get?” Claire asked.

  “I don’t know. I can work at a Home Depot or something.”

  She pulled me up from the floor. “How many drinks have you had?”

  “Not too many. Why?”

  “Are you crazy? You just got accepted to Princeton. Why would you want to work at Home Depot?”

  “It’ll only be until you graduate. After that, I’ll get a job at a bank or something. Don’t you want to get married?”

  “Well, it’s always been my dream to be proposed to by a man who’s so drunk he might ask Crayola to marry him if I say no.” She grabbed my chin. “What’s the matter? You look like you’re about to cry.”

  “I do not.”

  “Yes, you do. Is everything okay?”

  My mind flashed to Fat Nicky and what would happen if the job went south. “I sure hope so . . .” I mumbled.

  A look of concern crossed Claire’s face. “Cam, is there something you’re not telling me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Good, you had me scared for a second.” But she didn’t look convinced.

  To change the subject, I put my head on her shoulder and said, “You have nothing to worry about. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  I, on the other hand, had plenty to worry about including a sick mother, a vengeful uncle, and a cousin facing a manslaughter charge—to name my top three. Add to that an ex-mobster who wanted me to kill a man for him, and my life was a certifiable disaster. Lucky for me I was too exhausted to deal with any of it and passed out ten minutes later. So much for reading Claire’s essay or the Possibility of Expulsion. The good news was I didn’t have to say good-bye to her friends. The bad news, as I learned the next morning, is that a gin hangover makes a beer hangover feel like a group hug from a busload of cheerleaders.

  18

  “THERE HE IS!” MR. DENUNSIO SAID WHEN I WALKED INTO his room on my first night as an employee of Shady Oaks. My hours were twelve at night to eight in the morning, and as far as temporary jobs went, it wasn’t half bad. Yes, I had to mop floors and scrub toilets, but I was totally unsupervised and had plenty of free time to hang out with Mr. DeNunsio and plan a murder I had no intention of committing.

  “You wanna drink, kid?” he asked as I closed the door behind me.

  “No thanks, I’m not supposed to drink while on duty.”

  “On duty?” he said with a laugh. “What are you doing? Guarding the mop bucket?”

  “Gimme a break. I just got this job.”

  “Then you better start off on the right foot.” He pulled a bottle from his nightstand and held it up for inspection. “Anisette, straight from the old country.” He poured shots into two plastic tumblers and handed me one. I held it to my nose, and it smelled like a combination of licorice and paint thinner.

  “Salute!” He threw back his drink with a single gulp and punched himself on the chest. “Damn, I wish my gut was in better shape so I could have a little Scotch once in a while.”

  I took a sip of the anisette, and it burned my throat like industrial-strength mouthwash. While I tried to regain the ability to speak, Mr. DeNunsio pulled an asthma inhaler from his robe and sucked the mist deep into his lungs.

  “There,” he said with a cough. “That’s better.” Then he grabbed a pack of Virginia Slims off his nightstand and lit one up.

  “Just out of curiosity,” I asked. “What’s the point of using an asthma inhaler if you’re going to smoke a cigarette afterward?”

  Mr. DeNunsio shook his head and laughed. “What are you? Stupid? The inhaler is to open my lungs for the cigarette.”

  I laughed until I remembered what I was doing there, and the laugh died in my throat. This was the part of the job I h
ated most. The lying. Even at four years old I felt dirty making friends with people I knew I was going to rob. And yet, like most things I did as a kid, I was good at it.

  “I almost forgot,” Mr. DeNunsio said. “I have something for you.” He reached into his robe and handed me an envelope. I tore it open and found five twenty-dollar bills inside.

  “What’s this for?” I asked.

  “Road Runner.”

  “What?”

  “That horse you told me to bet on last week. That’s your cut.”

  I tried to hand back the money. “I don’t deserve this.”

  “The hell you don’t. I was all set to lay down a C-note on Sandy’s Pride. Well, guess what? Sandy’s Pride stopped to smell the roses, and Road Runner paid out five-to-one. Your advice made a six-hundred-dollar difference in my finances.”

  I put the money in my pocket. All I needed were sixty more Road Runners and I could return to school without pretending to kill someone.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Listen, son. There are two types of money in this world—easy money and hard money. And the only difference between a millionaire and a bum is the millionaire knows easy money pays the bills just as well. Capisce?”

  I nodded. “Capisce.”

  “Good, now let’s get to work.”

  “First I have a question.”

  Mr. DeNunsio raised an eyebrow. “Only one?”

  “One to begin with.”

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “Why us? I mean, why my family and not some professional?”

  He took a last drag off of his cigarette and dropped it in a coffee mug. “Two reasons. The first is your family isn’t part of the mob. You hear all this stuff about honor and vows of silence, but it’s a myth. Everybody talks. It wouldn’t matter if I was in freaking Afghanistan, two minutes after I asked a goombah to whack Fat Nicky, ten guys would be talking about it on Mulberry Street. Second, and the main reason, is I can’t afford anyone else. Sure, I’ve got a few bucks in the bank, but this place is expensive, and I plan on living a lot longer. A real hit would wipe me out. Any more questions?”

  “Not for now.”

  “Good.” He reached into his nightstand and pulled out a photograph. “Okay, this is where he lives.”

  I stared at the photo, and something about the house looked familiar. “Where is this place?” I asked.

  “About three miles from here.”

  “On Pine Wood Drive?”

  “You know it?”

  Of course I knew it. Fat Nicky lived less than five blocks from the Cheshire Arms, the apartment complex I had almost burned down as a kid.

  “Yeah, my mom and I used to live nearby.”

  “Damn. That complicates things. You’re a known quantity there.”

  I shook my head. “It was a long time ago. Besides, I know the area like the back of my hand. The yards, the canals, everything.”

  “Canals?”

  “Yeah, the backyards go straight to the water and are connected by canals instead of alleyways.”

  “No kidding?” he said. “That might work in our favor. You can swim, right?”

  “Like a fish.”

  “Good deal.” He pulled out a second photograph and handed it to me. “That’s him.”

  I took the picture and sized up the man I was supposed to kill. Fat Nicky was around seventy-five years old and his face was dotted with age spots. He looked tired and frail, and the first word that popped into my head was “grandpa.” I tried to hand back the picture, but Mr. DeNunsio refused take it.

  “Look a little longer,” he said. “Memorize it. Because after tonight, neither of us can have a picture of him in our possession.”

  I stared at the photo and asked, “How come they call him Fat Nicky? He doesn’t look that fat to me.”

  “He lost a lot of weight after he got shot.”

  “Then why do they still call him fat?”

  “Once you get a nickname you’re stuck with it.”

  “What’s yours?”

  “Sally Broccoli.”

  “Sally Broccoli?” I said with a laugh. “How did you end up with a name like that?”

  “I used to work with my pop selling vegetables at the Hunts Point Market. Some wiseass came up with the name and it stuck.”

  “I guess it’s better than Tony Toe Cheese.”

  “You can say that again.” He took the picture and tore it into little pieces. “And just to give you a taste of the kind of person we’re dealing with here, the first thing Fat Nicky made me do after I joined his crew was shake down my pop for protection money.”

  “Did you do it?”

  “You don’t say no to these guys.”

  “What happened?”

  “He made me break three of my father’s fingers. One at a time.”

  “Jesus.”

  Mr. DeNunsio sighed and reached for the anisette bottle. “Trust me, son. Jesus had nothing to do with it.”

  19

  AS MUCH FUN AS IT WAS HANGING OUT WITH MR. DENUNSIO and planning a make-believe murder, I was totally exhausted by the end of my shift. I wanted to visit my mother, but there was zero gas left in my tank, and I was worried I’d fall asleep on the bus ride home. I was so tired, in fact, I didn’t notice the scruffy guy with tattoos hanging out near the employees’ entrance.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “What the hell?” I said, jumping back. “Don’t scare a person like that.”

  “Sorry. You Roy?”

  “No.”

  “They said the new guy’s name was Roy.”

  “It was. But Roy got in a car wreck, and I’m the new new guy. Who are you?”

  “I’m the old old guy.” He stuck out a hand. “Frank Quinn.”

  I shook his hand and said, “Skip O’Rourke. How come you quit?”

  “I didn’t quit. I got fired.”

  “Why?”

  “You tell me. They said it was for stealing drugs, but that’s bullshit. I mean, I was stealing drugs, but I’d been doing that for years. Somebody must have said something.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to Roy about, but since he’s not here I’ll ask you.” He got in my face and said, “So, tell me, Skip O’Rourke. Why did I get fired?”

  I looked him in the eyes and said, “The hell if I know. My mother’s a patient in the O’Neil Pavilion, and I’m just filling in until they find somebody permanent.”

  My answer seemed to satisfy him, and he took a step back. “It’s not a bad job, actually.”

  “If you like the smell of pee.”

  “Well, there’s that,” he said with a laugh. “To be honest, I got to the point where I couldn’t smell it anymore.”

  “Hopefully, it won’t get to that point for me.” I nodded at the Lincoln Navigator parked behind him and said, “Nice car.”

  “Thanks. I’m about to lose it.”

  “Why?”

  “The money I made off the meds I stole went to the payments. Now I work in a furniture store, and the stuff’s too big to steal.”

  “Life can be challenging that way.”

  “That’s the other reason I’m here. I have clients who still need pills. Want to go into business with me?”

  I gave him the once-over. Even if I was stupid enough to sell drugs there was no way I’d do it with somebody like Frank. Then my mind flashed to the pills in my mother’s medicine cabinet, and I thought about selling him those. Except that was a dumb idea, too, and smelled way too much like something an O’Rourke would do. I shook my head. “Thanks, but I don’t think so.”

  “It’s easy money. The inventory system here sucks, and the only reason I got caught was that somebody didn’t know how to keep their mouth shut.”

  I ho
pped off the loading dock. “Sorry, Frank, I don’t deal drugs.”

  “Okay, but could you do me a favor? If you happen to find out who ratted on me would you give me a call?”

  “Sure,” I said, and entered his number in my iPhone. It was all an act because I already knew who had ratted him out: my mother. While not surprising, this struck me as more than a little hypocritical considering the lesson she’d given me on the same subject thirteen years earlier.

  We were working the Fine Jewelry counter at the Macy’s, and as my mother asked the saleslady to show her an expensive gold bracelet, I turned around and jammed an entire pack of Little Debbie Cloud Cakes into my mouth. This was no small feat considering I was only four years old, but I’d spent two days practicing and had mastered the fine art of stuffing my face without gagging. I chewed and chewed, and on my mother’s cue I began spitting up Cloud Cake all over the place.

  “Oh my God,” the saleslady shrieked. “Is he all right?”

  Of course I was all right, and so was my mother who took advantage of the saleslady’s concern to swap the gold bracelet in her hand with a fake one from Target.

  “I’m so sorry,” my mother said when the switch was complete. “Is there a bathroom around here someplace?”

  “On the second floor.”

  “Can you make it that far, honey?” she asked.

  “No,” I replied in the most pathetic voice I could muster. “I think I’m gonna be sick again.”

  “Then I better take you outside.” She lifted me up, and as we headed for the exit she turned back to the saleslady and said, “Can you put that bracelet on hold for me until tomorrow? My name is Fisher. Martha Fisher.”

  “Hurry, Mama,” I moaned. “Hurry, please.”

  The key to this scam was getting the saleslady to put the bracelet in the hold bin as quickly as possible. Even a mediocre salesperson can spot a fake piece of jewelry after a couple of minutes, and at a high-end place like Macy’s it takes less than that. Unfortunately, my mother failed to notice the white carnation pinned to the saleslady’s blouse. A white carnation is Macy’s code for a senior manager, which meant the woman had been dealing with weasels for years. We were barely halfway across the store when an alert went out over the PA system, and security came after us.